Only 349 days to go...

Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I was in grade school
and my parents were still married1... We had
an artificial Christmas tree.

This is an important detail as the Fletcher family -- mom, Fletch & brother
-- hasn't had an artificial tree since my parents' divorce. Even today, with
my mom living alone, my brother in one part of the state and I in another...
putting up the Christmas tree is a big deal. It's important to my mom that
we all be there together to do it. Because of shift schedules and semester
finals, that didn't happen this year until the 15th or 16th of December.
Although the fact that the tree my brother bought had been drying out in
a lot for three weeks somewhere had no resemblance to the past, the timing
was sort of a throwback to the old days.

As odd as it sounds, when we had a tree that we could leave up for weeks
on end and not have it die or catch fire, we didn't. The tree was always
up by my birthday (the 18th), but never much before then. Thanksgiving leftovers
were long gone and the school semester seemed nearly over before they pulled
the tree and the 1970s ghetto lights down from the attic. One more thing...
It didn't usually matter if we were all there together for the trimming of
the tree. Perhaps it was because my brother & I were so young, but my
parents did most of everything. I even remember one year getting off the
school bus and them having already put up the tree and lights. Regardless
of how it happened -- the tree was always the mark that Christmas had come.
And the point of this story is that Christmas always seemed to come at the
right time.

With only a few shelves of 80% off Christmas rejects remaining
in the stores, it's a good time to wonder where those old days went.

I'm not going to lament how the retailers start Christmas earlier and earlier
every year -- well, at least not yet. The biggest symptom of the problem
that I see is the number of people ready for Christmas to be gone by the
end of the year. How is it that we can spend months preparing for something
-- on both a secular and religious level -- and be ready to pack it in only
days later? Is it possible that we have the timetable in reverse? Shouldn't
we drag the celebration out instead of the preparation? (Sure, I know the
flaw in that logic is that it wouldn't make Wal-Mart a dime.) I mean... This
isn't Mardi Gras. We don't have to open gifts and then be at mass the next
morning to repent for them. (Well, not usually.) I've said this before. I'll
say it again. Where are the 12 days of Christmas?

All of these thoughts were brought on today when I was browsing music at
iTunes. I stumbled across a few Christmas carols mixed in among "winter"
music and even though Christmas has barely been gone two weeks... the music
seemed so out of place. Yet, one of the radio stations in Franklin starts
piping in the carols shortly after Halloween. How can it be okay to celebrate
something more than a month in advance but seem so awkward to celebrate it
two weeks after it passes?

Of course, there's not much that will come from this rant. I'm not going
to place a moratorium on Christmas celebrations. After all, I'm Mr. Christmas
in these parts. I've got a reputation to live up to. It's just a shame that
something so wonderful is shoved down our throats so much before hand that
we don't want to drag out the celebration just a little longer. Am I the
only one that wants to hold on to Christmas as it passes rather that build
it up beforehand?

1By saying "once upon a time," I do mean
the 1980s. Yes, I am a whippersnapper.